Time article: Getting real about the high price of cheap food

[iago]

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1917458-1,00.html
(or all on one page)

Great article! Likely the best mainstream article I've read about the horrors of the meat industry. :)

I'll post a few good paragraphs, but I *strongly* suggest reading it, and seriously considering it when you're eating the product of suffering animals. Most farms aren't the happy farms you visited on school fieldtrips, this is where your food *actually* comes from.

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon — circa 2009.

Horror stories about the food industry have long been with us — ever since 1906, when Upton Sinclair's landmark novel The Jungle told some ugly truths about how America produces its meat. In the century that followed, things got much better, and in some ways much worse. The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans. Those hidden prices are the creeping erosion of our fertile farmland, cages for egg-laying chickens so packed that the birds can't even raise their wings and the scary rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among farm animals. Add to the price tag the acceleration of global warming — our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.
[...]
In CAFOs, large numbers of animals — 1,000 or more in the case of cattle and tens of thousands for chicken and pigs — are kept in close, concentrated conditions and fattened up for slaughter as fast as possible, contributing to efficiencies of scale and thus lower prices. But animals aren't widgets with legs. They're living creatures, and there are consequences to packing them in prison-like conditions.
[...]
What we really need to do is something Americans have never done well, and that's to quit thinking big. We already eat four times as much meat and dairy as the rest of the world, and there's not a nutritionist on the planet who would argue that 24‑oz. steaks and mounds of buttery mashed potatoes are what any person needs to stay alive. "The idea is that healthy and good-tasting food should be available to everyone," says Hahn Niman. "The food system should be geared toward that."

[Towelie]

We already eat four times as much meat and dairy as the rest of the world

http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/1370_per_capita_consumption_of_meat_and.html
We are ranked 17th in the world for per-capita consumption of pork. Good game. (3rd in beef/veel, and 2nd in poultry, but still proves my point)

[iago]

We already eat four times as much meat and dairy as the rest of the world

http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/1370_per_capita_consumption_of_meat_and.html
We are ranked 17th in the world for per-capita consumption of pork. Good game. (3rd in beef/veel, and 2nd in poultry, but still proves my point)

I don't have the stats, but I'm guessing the dairy kills it -- most of the world doesn't eat dairy.

[Towelie]

We already eat four times as much meat and dairy as the rest of the world

http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/1370_per_capita_consumption_of_meat_and.html
We are ranked 17th in the world for per-capita consumption of pork. Good game. (3rd in beef/veel, and 2nd in poultry, but still proves my point)

I don't have the stats, but I'm guessing the dairy kills it -- most of the world doesn't eat dairy.

But it still shows how they are skewing the article.

[Blaze]

You're still overlooking the point of the article, Towelie, probably because it affects you in a negative way.

[MyndFyre]

There's a saying that we have in management (and actually I've used this ever since I was in any leadership role) - before you come to me with a problem, find a solution.

The article (at least the quoted part) ends with "'The idea is that healthy and good-tasting food should be available to everyone.'"  Great.  That's a problem.  How do we do it?

[iago]

There's a saying that we have in management (and actually I've used this ever since I was in any leadership role) - before you come to me with a problem, find a solution.

The article (at least the quoted part) ends with "'The idea is that healthy and good-tasting food should be available to everyone.'"  Great.  That's a problem.  How do we do it?

I don't think think a single or even a small group of people can come up with a meaningful solution, and proposing one would likely change nothing.

The problem is global, and endemic.. I think the first step toward a solution is simple education, which is what this article helps with.

I totally know what you mean, though, but welcome to my life -- I see a lot of problems in the world, but very few good solutions.

[CrAz3D]

I just had lamb.  Yum.

[iago]

I just had lamb.  Yum.

What's that have to do with anything?

[Towelie]

You're still overlooking the point of the article, Towelie, probably because it affects you in a negative way.

I actually didn't read the article or get the point of it. I just felt like refuting its credibility for some reason. :P

[Blaze]

You're still overlooking the point of the article, Towelie, probably because it affects you in a negative way.

I actually didn't read the article or get the point of it. I just felt like refuting its credibility for some reason. :P

This affects me.  Instead of figuring it out, time to discredit it!

[deadly7]

This affects me.  Instead of figuring it out, time to discredit it!

Welcome to America. Please leave your intelligence, freedom, dignity, and self-respect at the door. Enjoy your stay.